Academic qualification may not be necessary to be a successful entrepreneur, finds HNN after he meets these
What is the common thread that unites Henry Ford, Bill Gates and Richard Branson with our very own entrepreneurs Dhirubhai Ambani and Gautam Adani? Apart from founding and heading hugely successful, multimillion dollar corporations, each of these individuals is also a dropout. For varying reasons, none of the names in this distinguished marquee possessed advanced degrees in formal education. However, throughout their lives, each of them demonstrated that great purpose and the will to innovate and learn can be equally important. Blind and deaf American educator Helen Keller is credited with saying that “college isn’t the place to go for ideas”. Many in India would agree. For India, with its rich entrepreneurial communities and business culture has always been a land of opportunity for those who seek to make a mark. And they haven’t let circumstances or lost chances deter them.
The state of Gujarat is home to one of India’s most business-savvy communities. And Mansukhbhai Patel demonstrates why. The son of a farmer in a village called Trent in Ahmedabad district, Patel experienced several financial problems growing up. Supporting the family was top priority. In 1969, Patel was forced to quit his studies after Std 9, following which he trained to be an electrician. For many years, he did small-time residential wiring work before joining the textile industry in 1977. “Even as a child, I was interested in electrical appliances,” Patel says, adding, “So I paid close attention to the machinery used in the textile mills I worked in.” His objective was to build a machine that would strip cotton from its shellsomething that had never been attempted anywhere in the world before.
“After the cotton picking season, entire villages across Gujarat would engage in manual stripping of cotton from the bolls to make a little extra money,” he recalls, “I wanted to make the process faster and more profitable for those families”. Finally, in 1992, Patel launched his first machine under the Chetak Industries brand, made of wood and financed by advances from a local cotton ginning co-operative. He got orders for almost 60 machines, but after selling 13 of them, a technical flaw in the machines forced him to go back to the drawing board. “I lost Rs 20 lakh after recalling those machines. Luckily, I still had my job at Asarva Mills, where I’d been promoted to deputy electrical engineer by then,”
Patel says. “I redesigned an improved stripping machine in 1998 and that was a success.” Interestingly, he also pulled out his two sons from college to assist him in researching and refining his pet invention. Funding and support came from Srishti, an NGO and GIAN-Grassroots Innovations Augmentation Network. IIMAhmedabad also pitched in and helped him get his unique invention patented both in India and the US. Chetak Industries is now a company with a turnover of over Rs 4 crore and sells upto a dozen such machines-priced at Rs 4 lakh each-a year to ginning mills.
The lack of an educational pedigree never bothered Patel or his sons. Experts say that a formal education is often little more than a ‘filter’ for an entrepreneur, since big ideas can come from everywhere. “Today many startups are being launched by those backed by the tag of a fancy institute,” says Kallol Borah, co-founder of the HeadStart Network foundation, coincidentally himself a London School of Economics (LSE) graduate.
Borah adds, “Quite often, it is the alumni networks and global exposure at these institutes that matters, not the degree itself.” He cites the examples of a Bangalore-based firm started by some top B-school graduates that set out to make the world’s cheapest PCs and failed miserably. “Technical expertise must also go hand in hand with business acumen, which no amount of studying will get you. That is why many startups fail to scale up- they end up focusing on technical challenges,” he adds.
Rahul Khanna, director, Clearstone Venture Advisors says, “When funding companies, what we observe is the business orientation of the promoters,” He elaborates. “Though a good, solid education gives you a certain sophistication and access to industry networks, many domestic entrepreneurs have succeeded on the basis of their understanding and handling of local regulations, the local market and their competition.”
It’s not just old-school entrepreneurs who leave academia behind in pursuit of a dream venture. Abhimanyu Chirimar, 26, founded MarketHero, an online social community based on the stock market, in March 2008. Prior to that, he started and ran an online B2B and B2C sales company, SimplySold. Chirimar was an above-average student who did his higher secondary schooling from Chennai in 2001.
He was attempting a double majors in Economics/Computer Science at the University of Western Ontario, Canada, when he dropped out in 2004 (a year shy of getting his degree) to start SimplySold. “It was in university that I started noticing the other things people were doing with their lives.” The turning point, however, came in class during a course he took. “We spent two semesters building a hypothetical company with only $100,000,” recalls Chirimar. “As soon as my third year ended, I spent the summer in India and Thailand. I thought about that course a lot, wrote my first business plan and went about raising money. We got lucky and raised much more than $100,000 in a very short period of time through angel investors. That’s when I decided to not go back to school for a little bit.” SimplySold was a modest success, but as it was more of an experimental venture, Chirimar and his partners closed it down in 2006.
Chirimar then joined his family export business for a couple of years. It was during this time, that he came up with the idea of starting MarketHero. The company is angel funded, but Chirimar feels that it has never suffered for want of an academic whizkid at the helm. “Like it or not, an educational pedigree helps,” says Chirimar, “Professional investors do care about getting an ideal mix of education and experience. However, if you are bootstrapping, it doesn’t matter so much,” he adds.
Rajeev Karwal, founder of Milagrow, a company that provides business solutions to startups and smaller firms, says, “I believe that regardless of your academic record, the most important thing is to acquire the right kind of resources, be it skills, a good team, or physical assets. That kind of growth orientation is more important.”
If it hadn’t been for cricket, Parakramsinh Jadeja may have ended up working in a routine job in his native Rajkot. In 1986, Jadeja, who was studying in Std 12, asked his father for Rs 25,000 to participate in an under-19 cricket tournament. His father, a municipal employee, was able to barely raise half that amount. The incident changed Jadeja forever. He decided to start his own business and earn some money. “At the time, there were about 160 lathe machine manufacturers in Rajkot, so I decided to do something in that area,” says Jadeja.
In 1988, began working for his uncle on a conventional lathe machine (used to reshape metal, wood, etc.). While working on the machine, he studied its design and components closely. In 1988, with his newly acquired knowledge, Jadeja launched Jyoti Enterprises and started making lathe components like gearboxes and headstocks for lathe manufacturers. “Luckily, my parents always supported me throughout. I also had an active interest in lathe machine design even prior to starting Jyoti, so I learnt quickly,” he explains. He also convinced a local bank to give him a loan of Rs 33,000 for operational expenses. Soon, Jyoti was supplying to approximately half the manufacturers in the city. “We were manufacturing about 500 gearboxes a month at that point,” Jadeja recalls. From 1993 onwards, Jyoti got into complete lathe manufacturing.”
Despite lacking a formal education, Jadeja realised back in 1992 that computer-assisted lathe machines were the future. He not only bought a Rs 1.46 lakh computer, but also taught himself the ‘Autocad’ design software. The company then launched advanced lathe CNC machines in the market and renamed itself as Jyoti CNC. In 2008, the company acquired Huron Graffenstaden, a French CNC machine manufacturer. With clients like M&M, Kirloskar, Delphi-TVS and key vendors of the Tata Nano apart from vendors to other OEMs, Jyoti CNC is testimony to the man who learnt more on the job than he possibly could have in a classroom.
Indeed, the big difference is the ability to learn. Chirimar confesses, “I have to keep up with people who are ridiculously smart and extremely talented. Whether I have a double degree and a master’s or not, I need to keep educating and re-educating myself daily. If I don’t invest those 2 hours a day reading, I feel like I am being left behind.”
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